"Concentration
Camp" or "Relocation Center": What's in a Name?
by James Hirabayashi, Ph.D.

It was almost 20 years ago when I read an
article by Dexter Waugh in the San Francisco Examiner
titled "Semantic debates on war camps" (May 7, 1976).
The issue revolved around the use of terminology on a plaque
commemorating Tule Lake as a state historical landmark. At that
time I exchanged several letters with the chair of the State
Historical Resources Commission,a fellow anthropologist, who
voted against the use of the term "concentration camp,"
saying that he did not believe in editorializing on these
plaques. I argued that we should call them what they Webster
calls them: "places where political prisoners are placed
under armed guards." Furthermore, to use "relocation
center" was actually editorializing as it is a euphemism
used by those government officials who had stripped the Japanese
Americans of their basic constitutional rights. The debate had
begun in 1973, when Manzanar was established as a state
historical site, in arguments before the State Historical
Resources Commission. The late Edison Uno, as a spokesperson for
the Japanese American Citizens League, appeared to state our
case. Although the Commission voted against the plea of the
Japanese Americans at these hearings, the State Director Parks
and Recreation overruled the Commission and the term
"concentration camps" appears on both plaques.

In 1981, Raymond Okamura submitted
a comprehensive essay on the subject to the Commission on Wartime
Relocation and Internment of Civilians in Seattle. It was
subsequently published as "The American Concentration Camps:
A Cover-Up Through Euphemistic Terminology" (The Journal
of Ethnic Studies 10:3, 1982). Terminological usage continued
to be discussed in subsequent actions related to the
incarceration of the Japanese Americans such as the annual
pilgrimages, the repeal of Executive Order 9066, the Redress
Movement and the coram nobis court cases (Fred Korematsu, Gordon
Hirabayashi, Minoru Yasui). In view of the discussion over the
years, it seems strange that we are still debating the use of
terms describing this event.

Let us review the main points of
the debate. Over 120,000 residents of the U.S.A., two thirds of
whom were American citizens, were incarcerated under armed guard.
There were no crimes committed, no trials, and no convictions:
the Japanese Americas were political prisoners. To detain
American citizens in a site under armed guard surely constitutes
a "concentration camp." But what were the terms used by
the government officials who were involved in the process and who
had to justify these actions? Raymond Okamura provides us with a
detailed list of terms. Let's consider three such euphemisms:
"evacuation," "relocations," and
non-aliens." Earthquake and flood victims are evacuated and
relocated. The words refer to moving people in order to rescue
and protect them from danger.

The official government policy
makers consistently used "evacuation" to refer to the
forced removal of the Japanese Americans and the sites were
called "relocation centers." These are euphemisms
(Webster: "the substitution of an inoffensive terms for one
considered offensively explicit") as the terms do not imply
forced removal nor incarceration in enclosures patrolled by armed
guards. The masking was intentional. Perhaps the most obvious
circumlocution was the use of the term "non-alien."
This phrase appeared on yellow notice sheets affixed to telephone
poles announcing the removal orders: "Pursuant to the
provisions of Civilian Exclusion Order No. 92, this Headquarters,
dated May 23, 1942, all persons of Japanese ancestry, both aliens
and non-alien, will be evacuated from the above area by 12
o'clock noon, P.W.T., Saturday, May 30, 1942."

Exactly what does
"non-alien" mean? To whom does it refer? Of course, it
is a euphemism for citizen! Since they were nullifying the
constitutional rights of Japanese Americans, it is clear why the
government officials did not want to use the term citizen.
According to Okamura, euphemistic language accomplished a number
of objectives for using the terms: (1) it sidetracked legal and
constitutional challenges; (2) it allowed the government to
maintain a decent public image; (3) it helped lead the victims
into willing cooperation; (4) it permitted the White civilian
employees to work without self-reproach, and (5) it kept the
historical record in the government's favor. In spite of the
official use of the euphemism "relocation center,"
however, many government officials actually used the term
concentration camp including President Franklin D. Roosevelt,
General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Secretary of the Interior Harold
Ickes, Attorney General Francis Biddle and Supreme Court Justices
Owen Robert, Hugo Black and Tom Clark.

The harm in continuing to use the
government's euphemisms is that it disguises or softens the
reality which subsequently has been legally recognized as a grave
error. The action abrogated some fundamental principles
underlying the Constitution, the very document under which we
govern ourselves. This erosion of fundamental rights has
consequences for all citizens of our society and we must see that
it is never repeated.

A concentration camp is a place where people
are imprisoned not because of any crimes they have committed, but
simply because of who they are. Although many groups have been
singled out for such persecution throughout history, the term
"concentration camp" was first used at the turn of the
century in the Spanish-American and Boer Wars.

During World War II, America's
concentration camps were clearly distinguishable from Nazi
Germany's. Nazi camps were places of torture, barbarous medical
experiments and summary executions; some were extermination
centers with gas chambers. Six million Jews were slaughtered in
the Holocaust. Many others including Gypsies, Poles, homosexuals
and political dissidents were also victims of Nazi concentration
camps.

In recent years, concentration
camps have existed in the former Soviet Union, Cambodia and
Bosnia.

Despite all the differences, all
had one thing in common: the people in power removed a minority
group from the general population and the rest of the society let
it happen.

From a brochure distributed as part
of American Concentration Camps: Remembering The Japanese
American Experience, an exhibit at the Ellis Island
Immigration Musuem, April 3, 1998-January 5, 1999.

Historical
References to Japanese American
"Concentration Camps"

"I'm for catching every
Japanese in America, Alaska, and Hawaii now and putting them in
concentration camps. . . . Damn them! Let's get rid of them
now!"

CONGRESSMAN JOHN RANKIN,
Congressional record, December 15, 1941

"In an experience of nearly
three decades I have never found it harder to arouse the American
public on any important issue than on this. Men and women who
know nothing of the facts (except possibly the rose-colored
version which appears in the public press) hotly deny that there
are concentration camps. Apparently that is a term to be used
only if the guards speak German and carry a whip as well as a
rifle."

NORMAN THOMAS, Christian
Century, July 29, 1942.

In response to a reporter's
question about the West Coast "evacuation," the
President called Nisei "Japanese people from Japan who are
citizens," and went on to state ". . . it is felt by a
great many lawyers that under the Constitution they can't be kept
locked up in concentration camps."

"I have made a lot of mistakes
in my life. . . . One is my part in the evacuation of the
Japanese from California in 1942. . . . I don't think that served
any purpose at all. . . . We picked them up and put them in
concentration camps. That's the truth of the matter. And as I
look back on it--although at the time I argued the case--I am
amazed that the Supreme Court ever approved it."